


Clean Bones Gone

by Matrya



Series: Grief Fire [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Disturbing Themes, F/M, M/M, Necrophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-30
Updated: 2007-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 17:05:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matrya/pseuds/Matrya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose is dead. After the coda, the laundry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clean Bones Gone

Her body...

Exactly. Just a body. Nothing above it to speak of. Tears of flesh, fragments of bone, strings of muscle at the stump. Where her head used to be, there is nothing.

Jack insists that they can fix it. If not fix her...If not bring her back, at least make her presentable.

He also spends an hour sicking up behind one of the consoles of the dusty room. It stinks of rot and dust and vomit and shit and urine and the coppery twang of boiled blood.

They can't make her presentable. Tissue regenerators only work on living cells. Muscle and skin, warm and full of life on the brink of death. Her...the body...it isn't any of those. It's dead, a corpse that bore the name of Rose when it had a head instead of slivers of bone and ropes of skin.

The Doctor tires of Jack trying to fix it. There's nothing to do. The body has no face. He mourns, he returns to the TARDIS and he waits for Jack.

 

 

It's the morbid, rotten smell of a decaying body. The TARDIS changes the rooms at will, pushing Rose's room between Jack and The Doctor's because she's always kept them close together and there's always a body in each room.

The door stays closed, but the smell of dead flesh travels like the air, dancing around with the scents of her perfume, and Jack's cologne, and the Doctor's saddle soap.

They planned to take it back. Leave it somewhere, let someone find it; let Jackie hate him even more.

Never got around to it, they think, and the door doesn't open any more. 

They grow used to the stench as the scents of Rose fade away and become replaced by the rotting scents of the body.

They don't realise the odour when they bring another beautiful girl on to save the universe and live among the stars.

She makes a comment on the stench, jokes about dead bodies and cannibalism and, by the time she dies at the weaponry of a warrior without ever knowing about Rose Tyler, the smell has faded away.

Or maybe the room's just moved.

It doesn't matter. Rose died. The body sat in the room. Martha died. The body sat in the ruins.

 

 

He regenerates. Life goes on. They still travel and fight and shag and mourn like lovers mourn.

It's new and the same and the years might matter. The inevitable boils to the surface. Disposing of the corpse, decay that became static long ago.

It's Jack that says they have to tell Jackie, after the sounds of bone and dusting rot against the inside of the wheelie bin have stopped echoing through their heads. After it's gone and they've had a desperate shag, the Doctor pulling on his trousers. Four words, muttered against her pillow.

We've gotta tell her.

And cranial fulmination.

It's been two years since Jackie Tyler saw her daughter. It's been so much longer for them. 

The words make her face screw up in confusion and the desperate hope that it isn't real. That Rose is off with the Doctor and these two tall men with the brown hair and the long jackets are evil, lying bastards.

But then there's Mickey at the door and the knowledge that it's all real.

 

 

"You've changed," she tells him one night, blonde hair splayed over her pillow and pink lips lagging behind her words. He doesn't realise it's a dream until, "Sorry you're not ginger." He can't bring himself to care when she pulls him down to her. He's against her, eyes wide and its all skin against skin until he feels dust at his flesh. Decay breaking away and soft, warm, supple flesh turning into bone.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Memo:** I don't check comments or kudos, but feel free to yell at me on [tumblr](http://matrya.tumblr.com) or [check out](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Matrya) my other writing!


End file.
